Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and statistically analyzing biological data. A biometric is a measurable, physical characteristic or personal behavioral trait used to recognize the identity, or verify the claimed identity, of an enrollee. In general, biometrics statistically measure certain human anatomical and physiological traits that are unique to an individual. Examples of biometrics include fingerprints, retinal scans, hand recognition, signature recognition, and speaker recognition.
Verification (also known as authentication) is a process of verifying the user is who they claim to be. A goal of verification is to determine if the user is the authentic enrolled user or an impostor. Generally, verification includes four stages: capturing input; filtering unwanted input such as noise; transforming the input to extract a set of feature vectors; generating a statistical representation of the feature vector; and performing a comparison against information previously gathered during an enrollment procedure.
Speaker verification systems (also known as voice verification systems) attempt to match the voice of a speaker whose identity is undergoing verification with a known voice. Speaker verification systems help to provide a means for ensuring secure access by using speech utterances. Verbal submission of a word or phrase or simply a sample of an individual speaker's speaking of a randomly selected word or phrase are provided by a claimant when seeking access to pass through a speaker recognition and/or speaker verification system. An authentic claimant is one whose utterance matches known characteristics associated with the claimed identity.
To train a speaker verification system, a claimant typically provides a speech sample or speech utterance that is scored against a model corresponding to the claimant's claimed identity and a claimant score is then computed to confirm that the claimant is in fact the claimed identity.